ORIGINAL
EDUCATION: Adults who went to school 10, 20, 30 years ago may
have obtained the skills they needed for the jobs then.
But as you know, technology has replaced many of the manual labor
jobs. Now the jobs require much higher reading,
writing, and math skills as well as complex problem solving and
technology skills.

HISTORY: It is
difficult to pinpoint what the specific causes of low literacy
skills are. The point is that right now there are millions of
adults who need to improve their educational skills to compete in
the workplace, to fulfill their roles as parents and family members,
and to contribute to the community. We need to get educational
services to them now.

WE HAVE NO
WORKERS TO LOSE: Again it is difficult to pinpoint the cause. Our
focus should be on the future--on these 61 million who have not
finished high school, those with limited English ability, and others
identified in the NAAP reports who may have completed high school
some years ago but do not have the level of skills needed in today’s
workplace. We have no workers to lose.

CHALLENGE: How
do we expand services in order to enable them to acquire the skills
they need to succeed as workers, family members, and members of the
community?

A half million adults
who enrolled in adult education to qualify for employment, got a job;

Three quarters of
a million who enrolled in adult education in order to keep the job they
had, retained their jobs; and

Nearly 200,000 adults
who came to adult education in order to qualify for post secondary
education, enrolled.

PEFORMANCE
STANDARDS: Furthermore, last year, forty-three of the states
qualified for incentive awards for meeting or exceeding their
performance targets. Those measures include adults improving on
standardized reading and math assessments, as well as, getting a
job, keeping a job, or going on to the community college or further
education for those for whom that was their goal. So, adult
education and literacy programs have successful.

LIMITED
OPPORTUNITY: It is important to note that we serve less than 10
percent of the adults who have not completed high school. Our
classes are often full all year and we do not have the funding to
expand our services. Our challenge is to find ways to expand
services to more of those who need the help to upgrade their skills.

Of the 209
million adults in the country, 43 million have not finished high
school. Another 18 million speak a language other than English and
have limited English proficiency. Thus, 61 million adults (nearly
30% of the adult population) are captured by the US Census. The
NAAL identifies others who may have finished high school but still
have basic skills deficiencies. The adult education program
enrolled 2.7 million adults in FY 2003. That 2.7 million represents
4.4 % of the 61 million who could benefit.

ORIGINAL
EDUCATION: Adults who went to school 10, 20, 30 years ago may
have gotten the skills they needed for the jobs then. But
as you know, technology has replaced many of the manual labor jobs.
Now the jobs require much higher reading and math skills as well as
complex problem solving and technology skills.

LEARNING
DISABILITY: It turns out that a large percentage of the adults who
did not finish high school had a learning disability. Many went to
school before we knew much about learning disabilities. All we knew
then was they were not learning. Now we know that they have average
or above intelligence, but they learn differently from the way they
were taught when they were in school. We are working hard to learn
more about adults with learning disabilities so we can adapt
learning strategies to help them be successful.

i.Other Data if you need to go
there: According to the National Association for Adults with Special
Learning Needs (http://www.naasln.org/):

·50-80
percent of students in ABE and literacy programs with low reading skills
may have either a suspected or diagnosed learning disability.

·43 percent of learning
disabled are living at or below the poverty level and 48 percent of
those with learning disabilities are out of the workforce or
unemployed..

·OCR
guidance indicates that 40 percent of TANF population has a learning
disability.

WE HAVE NO
WORKERS TO LOSE: Even it they did have a chance to learn and were
unsuccessful, they are in our state’s workforce now and we do not
have any workers to lose. So regardless of their past, our focus is
on the future—to these 43 million adults who have not finished high
school, others who may have completed high school some years ago but
do not have the level of skills needed in today’s workplace, and
immigrants who want to improve their English literacy skills.

CHALLENGE: How
do we expand services to enable them to attain the skills they need
to succeed as workers, family members, and members of the community?

i.We are not sure. We do not
have those numbers. We do know that one of our major goals is to provide
English language instruction to help foreign born adults improve their work
opportunities and become citizens.

ii.If we inadvertently serve a
few illegals or individuals who do not intend to seek citizenship, that
should not get in the way of helping our newest citizens or citizens-to-be
succeed. Language is power and we need to empower the legal immigrants in
our state.

LOW
UNEMPLOYMENT: There does not seem to be high unemployment due to
foreign born adults taking jobs. (MAKE SURE THIS IS TRUE IN YOUR
STATE BEFORE MAKING THIS STATEMENT.)

NAEPDC Census Data Worksheet

In addition to the data
from the NAAL reports, there are several census sources that are helpful: